Devoted, page 34
For Hayden Eckman, watching Rita undress was as thrilling as what would follow. Avoiding the theatricality of a stripper, she removed each article of clothing slowly but with crisp efficiency and with a challenging stare that said, I am the law, mister, and you’re going to do just what I want. As a teenager who found girls as mystifying as they found him impossible, Hayden lived with his mother next door to Mr. and Mrs. Dowling, who were police officers. His adolescent lust was so intensely focused on Joyce Dowling, whom he watched through binoculars when she was sunbathing in her backyard, that he never quite got over her. The only thing that would have made Rita’s striptease more thrilling would have been if she had been in uniform and if her name had been Joyce.
Now, the sheriff put aside his half-finished glass of wine and welcomed Rita into his bed. She was lithe, lubricious, more ravenous than ever, she could not get enough of him, she was a sex machine, the ride was better than anything in his experience—until he fell asleep under her.
He woke in some confusion, for although he was naked, he was no longer in bed. He was instead in the bathtub. The water was cold. He was shivering.
Rita, now fully clothed, sat on the closed lid of the toilet, watching him.
Standing in the bathroom doorway, Deputy Andy Argento said, “Hey, he’s awake. That’s not supposed to happen.”
“It’s all right,” Rita said. “There’s not much left of him.”
“Whatever you say, Sheriff.”
This confused Hayden further. His voice was slurred as he said to her, “No, you’re the undersheriff.”
“And thanks for the appointment,” she said. “I’ll be interim sheriff until the special election.”
Hayden didn’t think he’d had enough Scotch and certainly not enough wine to be drunk, but he sounded inebriated. “What special election?”
“Tio Barbizon will endorse me. I’ve made the club, Hayden. I’m on my way.”
He smelled blood. He realized the water was discolored by it.
A lot of blood.
For a moment he thought Shacket had gotten into the house and had bitten him half to death. Then he realized that his right arm was lying on the porcelain ledge of the tub and that his wrist bore a deep cut from a razor blade.
His eyelids were very heavy. Leaden. He couldn’t hold them open. He said, “But I’m owned. I sold myself. I’m a valuable asset.”
“It’s nice for you that you could think you were, for a little while.”
Her voice seemed to come from a distance, as if she had left the bath and spoke from the bedroom.
With effort, Hayden opened his eyes, but she remained sitting on the closed lid of the toilet.
Shadows were gathering in the room. He couldn’t quite make out the features of the watching woman.
“Joyce?” he asked.
“Damn, you hear that, Andy? You know what I hated most about this asshole?”
A man who was only a silhouette said, “What’s that?”
“We’d be doing the nasty, him grunting like a pig rooting for truffles, he’d call me by her name and not even realize it.”
“Whose name?”
“Joyce. Some next-door neighbor cop he wanted to do when he was a geek teenager.”
“What a freak,” the man said.
“A freak’s freak,” the woman said.
Hayden Eckman tried to protest that insult. He couldn’t find his voice. And then he couldn’t remember what had offended him. And then—
116
After a few hours of sleep, Ben Hawkins met with Megan Bookman to review preparations for their unwanted but inevitable visitors. In spite of her fear of what might happen, she was nonetheless eager for a chance to fight back. Ben expected her to insist that Woody be hidden away from any potential confrontation, but she understood the boy’s presence was essential to convince the killers that, however traumatized she might have been by Shacket, she didn’t at the moment recognize the danger she faced. If they didn’t see the boy at once, they would suspect they’d been made, the guns would come out, and there would be blood.
Minutes later, Ben was in the kitchen when Carson Conroy, having returned from his third trip to the abandoned trailer park, brought in the last two bags and put them beside a pile of others.
“Not enough time to risk another run,” Ben said.
Carson shook his head. “No need to. That’s the lot of them.”
“If you’ll tend to all this”—Ben indicated the bags—“I’ll tuck the Fleetwood away like we planned.”
“You really think they’ll come today? It’s just yesterday they tracked Woody to his computer. Or I guess they think it was Megan.”
“They’ll want to move as fast as they can. They’re coming, all right. They won’t wait for night, because they’ll expect us to be more suspicious of them if they show up in the dark. With this heavy overcast, there’s only a few hours of good light left. They’ll be here soon. In maybe an hour.”
Carson glanced at a window, beyond which the day was steadily dimming under a sombrous, swollen sky. “And they’ll come boldly, pretending to be what they aren’t?”
“They’ll see it as their best chance to get in the door and establish control. Their kind think the rest of us are suckers.”
“Often we are.”
“Yeah, but not this time.”
Although the wind was rough, it had lost its rage. It blustered now instead of shrieking, and it seemed to choke on the anger that it could no longer adequately express.
The key to the motor home lay in the cup holder next to the driver’s seat. Ben drove out to the highway and turned north.
In less than a mile, he came to a mountain-view rest area with picnic tables. In respect of the wind and the threat of rain, no one currently made use of the facility. He parked the motor home and locked it and walked briskly back to the Bookman property.
As he approached the residence, he surveyed the windows. Blinds and draperies were drawn over all of them, except for the panes in the front door and the two sidelights, one of which featured glass and the other the semi-opaque plastic tarp that he and Megan had nailed in place the previous night.
In the house once more, he found everyone in the living room, waiting as had been arranged. Carson and Rosa were in armchairs. Megan sat on one of the sofas, Woody at her left side, a pistol under the decorative pillow to the right of her.
Ben stood at the fireplace, his back to the ceramic logs that were licked by gas flames. His pistol was tucked behind the mantel clock.
If it came to guns, they were dead, but neither he nor Megan felt comfortable without firearms within reach.
Coffee had been served. Platters of homemade cakes and cookies were offered on a sideboard, as if the Bookmans and their guests were in the habit of taking the equivalent of a British tea at this hour and wouldn’t be deterred by memories of a recent home invasion and violence.
In the wake of what had happened here, the scene was ludicrous, really. However, their plan depended on precise timing. An important part of it required that whoever came here with malicious intentions should not act precipitously once they were through the front door, that they should come into the living room and, for a minute or two, be uncertain about how to proceed. The best way to ensure the wanted reaction was to greet them without apparent suspicion and to present them with a circumstance that surprised them and left them a little disoriented.
“Looks good,” Ben told them, “but you’re as tense as if you’re waiting for root canals without novocaine. Fake a little relaxation. Check out Rosa. She’s got the right attitude.”
“I spiked my coffee,” Rosa admitted.
With a smile, Ben said, “Not a solution for all of us.”
“You’re sure we can’t call the police?” Rosa asked.
“Someone already called Eckman,” Megan said. “Someone he really serves instead of us. We’re on our own.”
Carson agreed. “So much for safe and peaceful Pinehaven.”
The boy had assumed an unusual posture, sitting back on the sofa, but leaning forward from the waist, his head cocked to the right, staring vacantly at the ceiling, breathing through his open mouth.
“Woody,” Ben said, “is something wrong?”
“I can’t talk. I’m being autistic.”
Megan put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t ham it up, sweetie.”
Woody looked to Ben for guidance. “You think I was overacting? I mean, I know this character.”
“There was a pretty thick slice of ham in that,” Ben confirmed. “Maybe you should just smile at everyone.”
“How’s this?” Woody shaped a sweet One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest smile, early Danny DeVito.
“Perfect,” Ben said.
“Don’t be afraid,” Rosa told the boy. “I thought I would be afraid, but I’m not. Well, a little. Maybe a little more than a little, but not a lot.”
Shaking his head, Woody said, “I’m not afraid. Not anymore. Not since Kipp.”
Ben Hawkins hoped that wasn’t true. Fearlessness got people killed.
He was afraid, a heaviness in his heart, a knot of dread in his gut. His eyes met Megan’s, and he saw she was racked with misgiving. Each of them in this room had so much to lose: not just one another, not just their lives, but a whole world on its way to wonder.
The sound of a vehicle turning into the driveway drew his attention toward the drapery-covered windows.
He went into the foyer, to the front door, and peered through the one intact sidelight.
Four men in dark suits were getting out of a black Suburban marked with the letters FBI.
He said, “They’re here.”
117
Kipp sitting in the upstairs hallway, alert.
He wanted to be with Woody, to be in a position to die for the boy if it came to that.
Kipp thought it would come to that.
Even on the brink of disaster, humans deceived themselves. They wanted to believe they would never die.
Dogs knew better.
Kipp loved people for their hopefulness. Like dogs, humans had been born to hope.
But if you understood the cold indifference of nature, as dogs did, then you did not hope to live forever in this violent world.
You tried instead to make the world better while you were here, and you put your hope in another, better world.
Oh, how fiercely, ardently, intensely, fervently he wanted to be at Woody’s side in this perilous moment!
But for now his place was here in the upstairs hallway.
He knew his duty.
Because Dorothy’s enemy was cancer, Kipp had not been able to do anything for her.
Woody’s enemy was not cancer.
A remarkable quiet had settled on the residence.
Kipp listened and heard naught, and that was good.
At last the wind had ceased to torment the structure.
The house did not groan with either all that it contained or the weight of history.
The air was rich with scents, and so many of them were of the greatest importance.
He took no pride in being the dog chosen by destiny to bond with the boy who might change the world.
Instead, he was honored, humbled. And determined not to fail.
He heard the vehicle turn in to the driveway.
The engine died.
Doors opened.
Kipp smelled one, two, three, four Haters.
His hackles bristled.
Four subtly different varieties of evil.
He got to his feet, holding his tail low and still.
The doorbell rang.
As the chimes echoed through the house, a peal of thunder followed, a rending crash as if the crust of the earth must have cracked to its molten core.
118
John Verbotski rang the doorbell. On the porch behind him were Knacker, Speer, and Rodchenko, the last two with briefcases of a style that FBI agents might carry, in which were all the necessary drugs and instruments of interrogation.
Verbotski startled when lightning flashed as if the sun had gone nova and burned off the overcast in an instant. A fierce crack of thunder reverberated in his teeth and bones.
As a hard rain abruptly rattled on the porch roof with the icy racket of hail, the door opened, and a man loomed on the threshold with a boy at his side.
The guy must have been the unknown individual who had arrived in a Range Rover. He was tall and fit, and he had about him an air that Verbotski didn’t like. Competence? Steadfastness? Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
His intuition told him to shoot this fucker now. But Verbotski had earned a university degree—or received one—in psychology. His favorite German masters of that field had written that intuition was merely a myth, that the concept had its origins in the Volkskunde of superstitious peasants who believed in such nonsense as natural law.
An enlightened man must be guided by cold reason based on clear-eyed observations and hard facts. When he gave credence to intuition, he was doomed as all such myth-besotted fools were doomed. He held his fire.
The boy at the man’s side must have been the mental misfit, the son of Megan Bookman. He was small for his age. His blue eyes seemed to swim in their sockets, as if he couldn’t quite focus on anything, and his smile was like that on a strange doll or marionette, eerie because it seemed perpetual and unrelated to any emotion.
“May I help you gentlemen?” the man said.
Verbotski had his fake Bureau ID ready, and he presented it with a smile that he was sure looked more genuine than that of the basket-case boy. “Special Agent Lewis Erskine.” Indicating his companions, who displayed more phony ID, Verbotski said, “Special Agents Jim Rhodes, Tom Colby, and Chris Daniels. We’re here to see Mrs. Bookman regarding the unfortunate encounter she had with Lee Shacket, who’s now on the Bureau’s most-wanted list.”
All that didn’t sound quite right to Verbotski as he said it, and he wished he’d taken more time to practice his lines. But the boy maintained his idiot smile, and the man appeared relieved. “I’m Ben Hawkins, a friend of Mrs. Bookman’s. Considering that Shacket’s killed people in at least two states, we’ve been wondering why the hell someone at the federal level wasn’t on this. Come in, come in, Agent Erskine, gentlemen. We’re all in the living room.”
Leaving them to shut the door behind themselves, Hawkins turned his back, not in the least suspicious, and started across the foyer. When he realized that the eternally smiling boy was still in the doorway, staring through Verbotski and crew, Hawkins halted and said, “Come along now, Woody. Let’s get a cookie, son.” When the boy still didn’t move out of the way, Hawkins returned and took him by the hand. “Sorry,” he said to Verbotski. “Woody is a very good boy, he usually listens, but he’s . . . you know, special.” With that, he gently led the kid toward the living room archway.
Being Lewis Erskine, Verbotski went into the house, and his crew followed, and Speer closed the door.
The torrents of rain came down so hard that they filled even this well-built residence with a soft drumming-rushing sound that was strangely comforting. Perhaps in the amniotic sac, an unborn child heard a susurration alike to this, the sound of his mother’s life-sustaining blood circulating ceaselessly through the body that encompassed and sustained him.
Whenever a thought like that occurred to Verbotski, he wondered about himself, whether something might be a little wrong with him. Had he continued his education with a master’s degree in psychiatry, he would have been required to undergo psychoanalysis to learn how to conduct such sessions, which might have been interesting. But in short order he’d gone from being a highly paid mercenary in foreign hot spots to being an extravagantly paid domestic murder-for-hire specialist, and a career path in psychiatry appeared insufficiently rewarding.
Now, as he followed Ben Hawkins and the boy into the living room, he heard the man say, “Megan, everyone, our prayers have been answered. These gentlemen are from the FBI, and they’re here about Lee Shacket.”
The people in the living room were having coffee, the sideboard was laden with tarts and cookies and finger sandwiches, Hawkins went to the fireplace where he had left his cup and saucer on the mantel, Megan Bookman put her cup aside on a table next to the sofa and rose to her feet to greet her visitors, and John Verbotski was impressed that she could be so fresh and lovely and psychologically together after all that she’d recently been through.
She had about her a regal quality, an air of indomitability. They might need a lot of thiopental and other drugs to break her, but she would be fun to interrogate. And when the interrogation was finished, she’d be fun to use, just to see how much humiliation she could endure without cracking.
A Latina woman was sitting in one armchair, a black man in the other, holding coffee cups, and neither of them rose, which made Verbotski’s work easier. He put away his phony Bureau ID and said, “Mrs. Bookman, I’m Special Agent Lewis Erskine.” As he began to speak, his three associates moved farther into the room, getting in position to act, each within striking distance of one of the adults. They could deal with the kid after everyone else had been Tasered, chloroformed, and restrained. Rodchenko and Speer put down their briefcases. “And these,” Verbotski continued, “are Special Agents—”
